Company Town : Creating Demand for a TV Program Takes Some Time : Promotion: But distributors are finding that to be a dwindling resource at stations.

Oprah Winfrey, Newt Gingrich and James Earl Jones were all selling something to an influential audience here last week. The audience wasn’t lawmakers, federal officials or the gun lobby, but television promotion and marketing executives attending the Promax and Broadcast Design Assn. Convention.

Participants wore badges reading “I’m Just Doing This ‘til DreamWorks Calls” or “Practice Safe Design: Use a Concept”--but the mantra of the 5,500 executives attending the convention was anything but flippant: “We don’t create the programming, we create the demand.”

That point was not lost on the studio executives and independent distributors trying to ensure their place on television screens this fall. They held “marketing workshops”--usually lavish lunches at which hosts such as Jerry Springer, Danny Bonaduce or George Hamilton and Alana Stewart presented station affiliates with their marketing plans. They threw parties, they gave away baseball caps, sports bags and jackets branded with their shows’ logos.

Oprah made a surprise visit, James Earl Jones came to sell his voice-over talents (“This is CNN!”) and Newt Gingrich came to sell the Republican viewpoint--only to be greeted by hisses from many in the audience.

All of the shows pushing their wares at Promax are already sold and guaranteed time slots around the country; the fight this time was for local screen time to push the programs to the viewing public.

The objective was to get executives so excited about a show that they would choose it for precious on-air promotions.

Several factors have combined to make the battle for those promotions tougher than ever.

Foremost is the huge number of new shows on networks and in syndication vying for attention this fall. A number of affiliates have also switched network allegiances this season and need to use the time to push their new identities and call signs.

In addition, this season’s upfront advertising market has been strong, and since stations haven’t seen this kind of money in recent years, station managers want to sell more spots while they can rather than give up time for promotion spots.

Indeed, on-air promotions are so tight that NBC came up with a new method of scheduling this year called seamless programming. The new look increased the amount of time available for promotions by splitting the screen over a show’s credits and running promotions down one side.

NBC’s on-air promotions are worth half a billion dollars annually, including the cost of the air time, according to John Miller, executive vice president of advertising and promotion at the network.

The distributors do everything they can to support the promotions--from supplying a range of teasers in 30- and 60-second slots and offering seasonal promotion spots from celebrities. Though on-air is the best place to push a show, the distributors also help local television stations with materials for print and radio spots.

NBC, for example, spends $30 million to $35 million a year on so-called outside media, which includes print, outdoor and radio campaigns often done in cooperation with local broadcasters.

Making the global local is the key to good promotions, according to Baywatch’s syndicators. “We have to be willing to work with the local markets and treat all of them as important, whether they are New York City or Wichita,” said Richard Mann, vice president of creative services at All American Television.

Stars make local appearances, viewers can win trips to the set or a Baywatch Ken or Barbie. Mann says the Baywatch Barbie, released last month under a licensing deal with Mattel, “truly secures the place of Baywatch in American culture.” It is also an ingenious way to push your show to a young audience.

Large suppliers such as Warner Bros. have less of a promotional struggle. Warner sells its popular programs with contracts guaranteeing on-air promotion time on local stations.

But even with its market dominance, the competition in the market and an eroding TV audience has Warner looking beyond the on-air slots for promotion venues.

“When we launched Tiny Toons [a cartoon program] in syndication last year, we found that 45% of kids who watched animation watched it on cable. So we went and bought air time on Nickelodeon, TBS and USA networks--the places where they were watching--to bring them back to our programming,” said Jim Moloshok, senior vice president of marketing and advertising at Warner.

Young people with on-line services watch 20% to 25% less television than those without on-line services, industry statistics suggest, so Warner Bros. and other entertainment companies and TV networks have developed sites on the Internet as a new promotional window.

While on-line subscribers total only about 8 million, the television marketers such as Moloshok say that at a time of eroding television audiences, they have to go to where the viewers are and bring them back to the medium.